The meeting with the Advisory Committee had ended two hours earlier, and she still hadn't managed to shake off the hounds.
The situation with the CNI agent had clearly worsened since the arrival of the Kennedy heir.
Before, the Spaniard had not dared invade her personal space; he had limited himself to orbiting nearby, to occupying the air she breathed, but it was enough for Lucrecia to set a boundary for him to step back without insisting. Not now. With the American present, both of them had taken the liberty of accompanying her to her office and remaining there as if they belonged. The only redeeming thing was that, at least, they were respectful and kept their mouths shut; every now and then she saw them lean toward one another, murmuring in low voices, but with her headphones on and Bon Jovi playing in the background, she had no idea what they were saying. Nor did she care enough to take the headphones off. She was only pretending to work, because the truth was that she could not focus on anything and all she wanted was for the workday to end so she could go back to her apartment with her handbag and start reviewing the medical records of the subjects who made up the rate of loss to follow-up, voluntary withdrawal, and withdrawal by investigator decision. It was also true that she could have left right then and there, since no one monitored her schedule inside Alcántara, but she had no intention of doing so. If they were going to stay there, then they would stay there without getting anything useful. She was going to waste their time… just as much as they were stealing hers.
It's all the same
Only the names will change
Everyday It seems we're wasting away
Another place...
Where the faces are so cold
I'll drive all night just to get back home...
Lucrecia smiled with a mixture of exhaustion and bitter irony. How was it possible for songs to fit so precisely into the moments of her life? How was it possible that Bon Jovi would start singing Wanted Dead or Alive at the exact moment when she felt those cold stares drilling into her back and all she wanted was to drive home?
I'm a cowboy
On a steel horse I ride
I wanted... dead or alive...
She turned toward the hounds and noticed they were watching her...
Dead or alive...
She shivered. A chill ran through her body.
She stood up and took off her headphones. The American lifted his light blue gaze at the gesture as the sound escaped, sketched a smile that felt far too aware... almost mocking, and, in flawless native English, hummed along at the exact moment Bon Jovi did:
- Sometimes I sleep, sometimes it's not for days...
She knew the interaction had been clever... she was a specialist in sleep physiology and pathophysiology and they had just come from a meeting where she had explained exactly that, but it was precisely because of that that Lucrecia grew even more annoyed at his attempt to sound pleasant. She shot him dead with her brown eyes and had to hold back the urge to scream at him that he would not have her alive or dead... she would rather blow up her own corpse than fall into the hands of men like these.
Even so, and only for an instant, she thought that perhaps they had already won the battle... and that all she wanted was to surrender, go home, and stop seeing them, even though she knew that the next morning they would be there again, breathing down her neck. But no. She was not one of those who let themselves be defeated. She was one of those who fought back.
- Do you like Bon Jovi, Kennedy? - she struck.
He nodded, but did not say a word.
- Would it be more comfortable for you if I shared the music? - she asked innocently. - Maybe that way you'll be less bored.
- I'm not bored, Doctor. - said the American hound.
- That won't be necessary. - warned the Spanish hound. - We don't want to make you uncomfortable.
- Oh, but it would be a pleasure for me. I insist.
Lucrecia returned to her seat and looked for her music list on the laptop. Baby One More Time by Britney Spears would do just fine... she pressed play, and the little chuckle from the American when he identified the melody only made her angrier.
- Does it suit your musical taste, Kennedy?
- Very much.
‹‹Arrogant idiot››
Lucrecia turned back to the laptop screen and caught the Spaniard murmuring in English, "stop provoking her." Just what she needed... a knight in shining armor trying to save her.
She opened the REDCap program and went straight to the patients' "safety and follow-up" variables. That part of the research was usually tedious and harmless; she did not even enter it herself, the junior researchers did, and if there had been anything out of the ordinary, Esteban would already have mentioned it. But given how things stood, she had also expected Sebastian to warn her about the agents... and there she was, listening to Britney Spears to make them uncomfortable, unable to throw them out of her office.
She clicked a couple of times and confirmed that the rate of loss to follow-up remained within what the team had estimated, which allowed her to release a bit of the accumulated tension. She clicked again and dug deeper into the variables and the entered data. The withdrawals since the beginning of the study, two years earlier, were what one would expect; up until the previous year, in fact, only three participants had withdrawn, and all with notice, so they did not even qualify as loss to follow-up. However, this year, in April more precisely, the number changed: nine withdrawals without notice. She raised her brows and felt the instant her blood turned cold. Nine research subjects who had simply stopped coming.
"In the research subjects, has beta-sheet folding not been detected?" Ledesma's question echoed inside her. "Of course not. None of the clinical trial subjects has been infected by prions," had been her answer. But was she really that sure? In front of her, she had nine subjects who had stopped attending...
Lucrecia felt a sudden cold run through her body, so intense that she stopped feeling the blood in her lips; the fingers in her hands and feet went numb, her pulse sped up, her palms grew damp, and the hair on her arms rose. Her body began to exact payment for the prolonged undernourishment of the day, the sustained exhaustion, and the accumulated pressure. She ended up lowering her head into her hands, seeking something to hold herself together, while an idea began to take shape in her mind... perhaps there were nine subjects categorized as "loss to follow-up" ... or nine people who may have gone insane in their homes because of a prion infection. God... if any of that was real... she would be in serious trouble.
- Dr. Alonso, are you all right? - The one who approached was the Spaniard. She barely managed to register the hand that came to rest on her back and, in the next instant, everything became confused.
She managed to recognize what was happening—she was suffering a hypotensive episode—before losing control of her body completely. When she opened her eyes again, she was no longer sitting. The two agents had taken her out of the chair and laid her on the floor; now she lay on her back, legs raised and being held by the American, while the Spaniard fanned her face with some papers.
Lucrecia blinked, disoriented.
"Of course not, Dr. Ledesma..." repeated in her head... "I wanted dead or alive..."
- Have you eaten anything today? - she heard the CNI man's voice.
She did not have the strength to answer; she closed her eyes, but forced herself to open them. She thought she said no, though she was not sure.
- Can you go get something with sugar, Leon? - she heard him say in English.
- I don't know the facility.
- Right. I'll go get something. Watch her.
She felt him carefully settle her head against the floor and then heard the footsteps moving away. She closed her eyes again, but almost immediately the American let go of her legs, allowing them to fall clumsily, as limp as she felt. Shortly afterward, she felt him lean over her and place both hands on her face to shake her firmly.
- Doctor, don't pass out. First tell me where you keep the access card. Diego will come back and I won't have any way to open the door.
‹‹Smart hound...››
Lucrecia looked at him, surprised that she could still feel annoyed even in that state. But he was right.
- My handbag... - she mumbled.
The American nodded and, without losing a second, slipped one hand behind her neck and the other over her abdomen, lifting her with a quick movement. As a result, the world immediately began to spin, everything around her came apart... and after that, she remembered nothing more.
☠️
The melody of Toxic by Britney Spears broke into the office at the very moment Leon was arranging Alonso's unconscious body on the floor.
Baby, can't you see I'm calling?
A guy like you should wear a warning.
It's dangerous, I'm falling...
The irony pulled a smile from him.
- You'll have to forgive me, Doctor, for not coming with warnings... but I have priorities - he murmured, just as he got to his feet and headed straight for the laptop screen. He sat down in front of the notebook and took special care not to touch the mouse, intending to verify the last movement that had driven Alonso into a hypotensive episode.
Before his eyes, he found the first clue.
Variable: Safety and follow-up.
Good... she had been looking at "patient follow-up." Carefully, he picked up the doctor's pen and a sheet of paper from the desk. He began writing down the data, aware that he could no longer stop. He had caused her to faint, and the only thing left for him to do was follow the trail. The mood in which she woke up, and how she would take it, was something Future Leon would have to deal with.
‹‹Present Leon might be getting there in time, for the first time, to stop this madness. Never again another incident like Raccoon City.››
If there was still a chance to dismantle it all before there were people wandering through Madrid like zombies, he would have to take certain risks. Benfield had not assigned Operation SLEEPER to him for nothing. As things stood, Leon felt it was his responsibility to find out what the hell was going on at Alcántara Pharma... too bad he was unfamiliar with anything he was reading. Even so, he wrote down that, between 2007 and 2008, three patients had been listed under the category "voluntary withdrawal" and then, suddenly, the information showed that, in 2009, nine subjects appeared as "loss to follow-up" ... and that was where the mouse cursor pointed.
‹‹This is what Alonso had been looking at and what made her enter that state...››
Leon wondered where the hell the clinical files for those patients would be kept or how he could gain access to the database to search their names and ask Hunnigan for updated information.
A sharp knock made him jolt in the chair.
‹‹Fuck›› Diego had already come back.
- Leon!
- Wait a second, I'll open up right away!
He stood up, folded the notes, and stuffed them into the back pocket of his pants. Then he swept the office with a quick glance, looking for the damned handbag, while thinking about what he was going to tell his colleague when he found the doctor completely passed out.
There it was.
Leon strode quickly to the bag and opened it, intending to find the card but then...
... some folders wedged tightly inside greeted him. He took them out; there were three. He opened the first one and saw the name and surname of one of the research subjects. The year of entry into the study read 2007, but right then there was a stamp on the first page that read: "voluntary withdrawal." Well, then... the doctor had gotten ahead of him on this matter far more than he had thought. Instinctively, Leon turned toward the woman lying on the floor and, when he looked at her once more, he stopped seeing her only as intelligent and haughty... perhaps she also had her share of danger. Perhaps she had something to hide... more precisely, something to hide from him.
Diego knocked on the door once more, and called to him again.
Leon lunged for the desk, grabbed the pen, wrote down the names of the three subjects who had withdrawn with notice, along with the ID, and only then searched for the access key inside the handbag. He shoved the documents back in and, as he approached the door, took out his own identification card and compared them. They were identical except for a line running across them. The level 1 and 2 access cards—his—carried a blue line, hers, level 3 and 4, a green one.
‹‹And well, what color is the level 5 one?››
Leon placed his hand over the radiofrequency reader and the door opened.